London: A shared commute, just like shared dreams and ambitions, can help make a successful relationship, according to a study.Married couples are happier if they travel to work in the same direction. Experts believe it makes couples feel they share wider goals in life.

They say the findings suggest newlyweds should consider choosing a home that requires them both to commute in one direction, rather than one located at the midway point between their two work places, a daily reported on Monday.

"Couples' marital satisfaction can depend on whether they commute to work in the same or different directions," said lead researcher Irene Huang, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"Physically moving in a particular goal-relevant direction (e.g. commuting to work) might become associated with more general goal-related concepts." The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, involved two surveys of married working adults in the US and Hong Kong.